Freaks and Geeks
We’ve already gone serious (and we’ll go there again, promise!), but now it’s time to laugh a little. “A little” being a modest word here—because when the films from the Freaks and Geeks section, co-created with Filmweb, first hit big screens in the early 2000s, they sparked more than a few unstoppable fits of laughter.
At the 16th American Film Festival, we’re bringing that vibe back.
Out there, weird, and uncompromising
They say comedy is serious business—it hides sharp truths beneath a lighthearted mask. And as the history of cinema shows, only the most skilled filmmakers have mastered the genre.
Fast-forward to today: in 2025, comedy in cinemas is a rare find. That’s why we’re rewinding to the last great comedy wave of the early 2000s. Together with Filmweb, we present Freaks and Geeks—a retrospective that proves laughter isn’t just healthy, it’s essential to cinema.
“The five titles presented in the Freaks and Geeks section function as museum exhibits only in the sense that they capture something undeniably important to audiences around the world at a specific moment in history. These were viewers who, en masse, mocked their own worries, phobias, and frustrations at the dawn of the century, making their on-screen portrayals an integral part of their own identities. Controversial, out there, weird, and uncompromising, these films remain a testament to a crucial trend in American comedy—one that so few cared to analyze more deeply or truly acknowledge,” writes Maciej Satora, co-creator of the section and AFF’s man at Filmweb (or Filmweb’s man at AFF).
Freaks and Geeks (its name borrowed from the cult TV show) are not only festival darlings like Mark Duplass, but also actors who later became major stars: Robert Downey Jr. (in his most politically incorrect role ever), Jonah Hill, and Seth Rogen—who remains the undisputed king of this era, still true to comedy today with the success of the series The Studio.
The section will feature:
- Napoleon Dynamite, dir. Jared Hess
- Superbad, dir. Greg Mottola
- Tropic Thunder, dir. Ben Stiller
- Humpday, dir. Lynn Shelton
- This Is the End, dir. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
The section is curated by Jan Lubaczewski, Maciej Satora, and Łukasz Muszyński from Filmweb’s editorial team, who will also host a special podcast series about the films in the retrospective.
